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In this issue, we offer a kaleidoscope of snapshots that speak to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on family life. The authors are mental health professionals (from the United States, Barcelona, Germany), whose work involves ongoing contact with children, adolescents, and/or their parents.
The nearly 3 years of COVID-19 has engendered a blend of massive global and domestic, political and technological, change, evoking a level of outer and inner violence, isolation, and fear that has had and continues to leave an inestimable imprint on all aspects of our lives. These years have affected how we think, feel, imagine, and connect with each other. We are only beginning to stand back far enough from what is happening to take stock. This is a nascent effort at that very important task.
The volume begins with a article by Holly Johnstone, who gives us a stunning essay on the complex ways her early life experience with polio, coupled with the present pandemic, reevoked a profound personal trauma, affecting all aspects of her life. Tools she developed as a young child were brought to the fore as she reacted to and aided her patients in metabolizing the current pandemic. The ways in which past and present trauma intermingle is achingly described and a poignant way to begin this volume.
Diane Ehrensaft then thoroughly and beautifully describes how the distancing from peers that the pandemic necessitated had an especially profound impact on transgendered youth who were trying to come to terms with their evolving gender identities. It highlights the critical importance of mirroring in adolescent relationships, especially during times where socialization is so markedly impaired and fraught with tension.
Elizabeth Fritsch then describes an inspired treatment paradigm, aided by the work of a group of psychoanalysts with pregnant women and mothers of infants. This population, often most profoundly affected by social isolation, lack of access to health systems, and fear of the virus, a